


Five Times Dean Holds Castiel's Hand and One Time He Holds a Promise

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Absent Parents, And the end is a surprise, Angst, Best Friends, Brothels, Castiel's First Time, College Student Dean, Comforting Dean, Cuddling & Snuggling, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hand Holding Of Course, High School Student Castiel, High School Student Dean, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Of Age Sex Though, Protective Dean Winchester, Sad Castiel, Sad with a Happy Ending, Through the Years, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean shifts until he's pressed against Cas's back, close enough to share the same half-wet pillow. Dean drapes an arm around Cas’s and weaves his fingers through his hand again like a knitter. Like Dean's knitted this particular piece a thousand times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Dean Holds Castiel's Hand and One Time He Holds a Promise

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't done one of these in a while! Hopefully I'm not too rusty.

The first time it happens, it’s an accident.

Dean is sitting in his room with his best friend Castiel, just like any other school day following another eight hours of information warehoused in the corner of his eyes and inside the hollow spiral of his ears. It doesn’t go further than that, usually because the Bueller-style drone of his instructors acts as a serenade for sleep.

Unless it’s in Mr. Creaser’s class. Just two seconds into a deathlike oblivion and Mr. Creaser will deliberately plop a twenty-pound book in a student’s face. And if they’re lucky, they aren’t a drooler like Dean, so they don’t get a second shower in their own saliva.

Mr. Creaser calls it a cost-effective electroshock therapy. Dean calls it a lawsuit waiting to happen.

“Can you believe this?!” Dean rages. “Creaser’s having us do three different reports on the fathers of Psychology! Freudian’s Psychosexual theory is literally just an early account of watersports and parental incest." Cas, who’s usually passionate about the human condition, does the same with his phone, only his move much faster and his thumbs fly at the speed of light. Or his seventeen-year-old digestive system. “ _Dude!”_

Cas jolts when Dean’s palm collides with the back of Cas’s hand cradling his phone. “What? I’m listening!” he defends, voice filled with more gravel than the average sidewalk, “Freud gave zero fucks about fucking.”

“No, not that,” Dean says, though it barely comes out in one breath. “The Stones are coming to Kansas City! I put out a concert alert, like, a month ago. Dude, we _have_ to go.”

“Uh, Dean—”

“Cas, you can’t talk me out of this. I’m using _every_ penny from the garage—”

“Dean. I’m losing circulation.”

“What?” Dean glances over and realizes he still not only has his hand over Cas’s, he’s latched onto it tighter than a leech, squeezing the life out of his slender tendons. Dean retracts seconds later, blushing. “Oh. Sorry.”

***

The second time is when Dean treats Cas, still a virgin believe it or not, to a brothel.

He says believe it or not because Cas is probably the hottest guy he knows. (Dean could just be bias, granted he recently came to terms with his sexuality, and Cas is his best friend in the whole world.) The dude has these crazy blue eyes—crazy the way a full blue moon makes a werewolf. They’re easy to get sucked into, especially with two black craters that fluctuate in size depending on what he sees. Bees, PB&Js, and bad pornos typically help with that. Top that off with brown mussed hair, light stubble, and a tan.

Oh, those lips that curves into his mouth, like a misread step on an origami fold, but are still somehow plush—

And stopping there. At least until after he tries to hit Cherry, a girl he meets at the bar with a rack bound to bounce back faster than a tetherball on a pole.

Before he can test his theory, however, a loud feminine scream echoes down the hallway. Dean recognizes the voice as Chastity’s, a girl who approached their table moments before, beckoning the affections of Cas.

Dean rushes down the hallway, only to rush out just as quick, because apparently, Cas, who had been standing in the doorway, clothes rumpled and exposing a little bit of his collarbone and hair even messier, tried to relate with Chastity on a level deeper than physical.

Cas tried to reassure her she’s a smart girl with a lot of potential… despite her father’s leaving.

“Dude, the business _runs_ on absent fathers, it’s the natural order!”

Cas actually draws into himself, like he’d just been scolded. “I just wanted to give her closure. The kind I never got to—why are you laughing?”

Laughing is an understatement. Between the high from the joint they smoked before going in and the high Dean’s on now, his head feels like it’s soaring. “You… you got rejected by a prostitute.”

Cas laughs too despite himself and shoves Dean lightly, which quickly turns into a friendly joust. Then, somehow he’s staring at Cas when Dean pins his friend against the unsettlingly sticky wall behind them with both of Cas’s hands raised above his head so he can’t fight back.

Cas stops squirming, knowing well enough Dean can overpower him physically, but it’s more than that. Cas isn’t fighting with his body anymore. He’s fighting with his eyes. They rake Dean’s like the neighborhood kid tending people’s lawns during the summer. He rakes through the leaves as fast as he can and piles them into one big stack. Dean’s eyes are the leaves. And they’re definitely building up to something, Dean can feel it…

Then he feels his hands instinctively curl into Cas’s as Dean dives into his mouth.

It doesn’t last more than ten seconds, but ten seconds feels like ten years…

…which isn’t long enough, so Cas pulls him back in.

They don’t talk about that night spent wrapped naked in each other’s arms.

***

The third and fourth time happens when Cas is on the brink of tears.

Dean books the next flight after Cas calls him.

Cas never calls. Cas texts with elusive and oftentimes impossible to find emoji’s. Lots of emoji’s. Their Skype conversations for the last three years since Dean headed east for his Bachelors in Criminology have been comprised of meme reactions and funny gifs.

"I don't get it," Cas says, lip quivering. "All this time passes and he just pops up? Doesn't call, doesn't write... do you know he never sent me a birthday card? Not one. I waited up all day, thinking the mailman just made a mistake and would turn around eventually." Cas pauses, laughing dryly, 'The only thing keeping me from thinking he was dead was the child support payments. Morsels of cash. Morsels.

‘I should've used them to get one of those flip phones at the gas station so I could blow up his voicemail with slews of curse words he was supposed to teach me. But instead I bought a pack of cigarettes and a Milky Way because I knew no one was there to stop me from wrecking my health." Cas carefully glides his hands over his denim-clad thighs. “I did the honor of ruining myself so he didn’t have to.”

Dean carefully reaches over the jumbo tub of chocolate ice cream to lace his hand with Cas's on his thigh.

When Cas's breathing starts goes as shallow as the thoughts of the man whose thoughts consume him, Dean starts sweeping his thumb across the smooth plane between Cas's index finger and thumb. He feels Cas's pulse slowly stabilize and forces himself to train on _The Wire_ poster slapped on Cas’s closet door.

He pretends he doesn't feel Cas squeezing back in a silent thank you, because Dean doesn't need a thank you. It's Dean's _job_ to be there for Cas. What Dean needs is for more important men to be there for Cas.

"I don't want you to go." Cas's voice breaks against his pillow.

Dean shifts until he's pressed against Cas's back, close enough to share the same half-wet pillow. Dean drapes an arm around Cas’s and weaves his fingers through his hand again like a knitter. Like Dean's knitted this particular piece a thousand times.

"One more year," Dean whispers into the ever-messy tuff of hair surrounding Cas’s ear. "You'll come live with me in Maryland, right? Help me fish in some crabs?"

"Hmm, I wouldn't dream of catching crabs with anyone else."

"Better not, I'll hunt your ass."

Cas's laugh is the last sound they both hear before sinking into their respective thrones of sleep.

***

“Castiel Novak,” Dean says proudly, _finally,_ after a longwinded speech while his knee goes completely numb in front of a dozen paying customers, “will you marry me?”

With a hamburger stilled at his mouth, just waiting to be stuffed into his stomach, Cas replies, “What?”

The patty collides with Cas’s plate when Dean draws out the ring. It’s emerald, to match the color of Dean’s eyes. Dean’s is sapphire, for Cas’s. “Marry me,” he repeats. “We’ve known each other for eight years and half that time, I knew I was in love with you. I don’t need eight more to confirm it.”

Cas’s throat is torn between a laugh and a scoff: “I… I mean… can I… take a raincheck on the burger?”

Dean laughs, along with a few other people in the restaurant who have no idea who Cas was until tonight. “Sure, I’ll get you a to-go box. Does that mean—?”

“Yes, you _ass_ , that means yes!” Cas exclaims, tears racing down his cheeks as he throws himself at Dean.

Dean breaks into a smile big and bright enough to melt the sun as a round of applause breaks out in the small Maryland diner. He fumbles with the box before taking Cas’s hand in his and slipping the ring onto his finger.

From then on, Cas’s hand doesn’t go cold for a second.              


End file.
